Reasons young adults give about non practice

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I belong in that 18-30 catagory! :curtsey:

I’m a cradle catholic, did my first communion, got confirmed and everything. It was mainly after my confirmation that I stopped going to mass. At first I missed a Sunday or two to study for homework I had procrastinated on. Then it just became laziness. 😊

I don’t think I would consider myself Catholic at the moment because of disagreements with Church teachings but it’s definitely something I’m working on because I don’t think I can ever leave the Eucharist. A lot of my science major friends have become either atheist or agnostic, but also a lot say they miss going to Church with their family and appreciate the church a lot more by being away from it for a whole school year. 🙂

My University offers Catholic Mass on Mondays in a nearby chapel but as the school work started mounting and I found myself drinking gallons of coffee every day, my priorities just shifted to solely academics. Being a Biology major with pre-med requisites takes a lot out you, but I give credit to God for every accomplishment, Aced test, and scholarship received because I know only through Him will I ever accomplish anything. :o
 
I belong in that 18-30 catagory! :curtsey:

I’m a cradle catholic, did my first communion, got confirmed and everything. It was mainly after my confirmation that I stopped going to mass. At first I missed a Sunday or two to study for homework I had procrastinated on. Then it just became laziness. 😊

I don’t think I would consider myself Catholic at the moment because of disagreements with Church teachings but it’s definitely something I’m working on because I don’t think I can ever leave the Eucharist. A lot of my science major friends have become either atheist or agnostic, but also a lot say they miss going to Church with their family and appreciate the church a lot more by being away from it for a whole school year. 🙂

My University offers Catholic Mass on Mondays in a nearby chapel but as the school work started mounting and I found myself drinking gallons of coffee every day, my priorities just shifted to solely academics. Being a Biology major with pre-med requisites takes a lot out you, but I give credit to God for every accomplishment, Aced test, and scholarship received because I know only through Him will I ever accomplish anything. :o
 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++

God’s Spirit is in my heart,
He has called me and set me apart.
This is what I have to do,
what I have to do.

He sent me to give the Good News to the poor,
Tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more,
Tell blind people that they can see,
And set the downtrodden free
And go tell everyone the news that the Kingdom of God has come,
And go tell everyone the news that the Kingdom of God has come.

Just as the Father sent me,
So I’m sending you out to be
My witnesses throughout the world,
The whole of the world.

Don’t worry what you have to say,
Don’t worry because on that day
God’s Spirit will speak in your heart,
Will speak in your heart.
 
I’m nearing the end of the 18-30 category, and I’ve got an inkling of what it may be/what it was for me.

I converted to Catholicism at 13, so I was never very well catechized as a small child. When I attended regularly through high school, I had people I saw at mass every Sunday. They knew me, and I was part of a community. Then I moved to take care of my grandmother. I was far away from anyone I knew, and at the local catholic church I felt like an outsider. The priest never acknowledged my presence, and blatantly ignored me when I tried to introduce myself to chat with his “fishing buddies”. I was an outsider in a new town, and felt that in the church. Eventually, my church attendance became spotty, then non-existant. I would suddenly have a great desire to go back, but I would be too afraid to attend Reconciliation, because I didn’t know the priest. I didn’t feel like I could trust him. I already felt like he was “judging” me for being an outsider, and I didn’t want him to hear my sins which would, in my mind, tarnish his opinion further. So I would stay home.

Eventually, my guilt and sadness became so intense, I began to drive myself out to other towns to receive absolution, then go back to the local parish. I never felt completely welcome there, and thankfully moved again to a much more welcoming parish.

Now I live in the city near my FH’s family. They go to mass with me. When I arrived here, that community was in place. I was already “accepted” and it just became part of that.

The 18-30 age bracket is often when people leave home and comfortable surroundings and go new places. Often in doing so they leave behind their church community, and can’t find one that fits their “mold” and mental vision of what mass should be like. Worse, they have no one to attend mass “with”. And before someone follows up and says something like “attend mass with Jesus” please remember that Catholicism is a social religion. Our religious life is done in community. Our children are baptised at a Mass. They go through a class with other children to learn about Reconciliation. They do the same for the Eucharist and Confirmation, both of which occur at mass as part of the Community. They marry as part of a community and family ceremony. And when they die, they will be mourned with a funeral mass. For Catholics, our masses are tied to every part of family life. When we are away from that, it’s no wonder we feel distant.
 
Several of my younger extended family members no longer attend Mass either, and I pray they’ll return. I think they’re influenced by their non-faith peers, the pill and free-love aspect that came about in the 1960’s, the current “me” generation, needing constant stimulation and being “bored” (i.e., not understanding) Sunday Mass,and what’s in the media today. If they only knew the peace, joy and contentment by following their Catholic faith, belief in Jesus Christ, and reading scriptures. To me as a Senior citizen, life wouldn’t have meaning without God and his promises.
 
I’m 24 and for me it’s disagreement with church teachings and I can’t stay in a church that I don’t agree with and I’m falling more so along the lines of agnostic.
 
glamourdollxoxo said:
I’m 24 and for me it’s disagreement with church teachings and I can’t stay in a church that I don’t agree with and I’m falling more so along the lines of agnostic.
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I’m headed in that direction too. I feel like EVERYTHING is considered a sin. What happens if I don’t think something is a sin and I have absolutely no remorse or guilt about doing it? Is it possible to make a good confession? Especially if I have intentions of doing it again? Then I can’t receive the Eucharist and I feel like I’m just stuck in one place. 🤷
 
BioNerd said:
I’m headed in that direction too. I feel like EVERYTHING is considered a sin. What happens if I don’t think something is a sin and I have absolutely no remorse or guilt about doing it? Is it possible to make a good confession? Especially if I have intentions of doing it again? Then I can’t receive the Eucharist and I feel like I’m just stuck in one place. 🤷
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I’m not trying to sway you one way or another, but I realized the church isn’t for me when my beliefs don’t line up and I can’t in good conscious support it. I’m at peace with my decision, but it’s just something I can’t do anymore when my heart isn’t into it. I may check out the ECLA Lutheran church that is liberal that I was originally baptized in one of these days, but I can’t call myself a Catholic any longer and don’t feel the need for organized religion at this time. I had a good run with it, but it’s time for me to move on.
 
For me, I left the church because I thought it was stupid, boring and useless. I thought I was a special snowflake making an individual decision, but I really was parroting my new-age father and what culture was teaching me. Since I had no strong catholic figures in my life who were under 70 years old, I defaulted to the easy road. After lots of messing up and “experimenting” I finally took an interest in religion and was pulled back to the catholic faith after more than a decade.

Educate yourselves and your children, I wouldn’t expect anyone else to teach them about faith. If you don’t, then culture will, and it won’t be pretty.
 
I stayed as a teenager because there was no option in our house!

When I left home to go to study, it was more of a habit and a sense of guilt if I didn’t.

Ironically, I only really began to develop my faith in a more adult way when I moved somewhere without a Catholic church. I had no car and in those days there was no public transport on a Sunday, so the local Catholics attended Mass once a month in the Anglican church, which i visiting priest borrowed for the service. It got me thinking about the days in England when Catholics had to subvert the law just to go to Mass and how I’d always taken it for granted.

Throughout my 20s and even now, I struggle with a lot of the Church’s teachings and some I honestly can’t quite understand, but I stick to the rules, pray and hope for the best. I’m not so much a Cafeteria Catholic as a ‘eat what’s on the plate even if you don’t like it … and hope for the lollypop at the end, kind of Catholic’😃

If you asked me for a definitive answer on what for me is faith, what is habit, what is superstition and what is a response to stress, I couldn’t answer. I suspect strongly though, that if my parents hadn’t shown such solid dedication to their faith in actions as well as going to Mass, I’m not sure I’d still be going.

Some of the literature our current Parish Priest promotes actually leaves me cold. I don’t like the tone of it at all. I think had this been the approach of our old PP, I might have left the Church. Now, as an adult, I can see that the Truth is there, but it’s the style of writing and the way it is put over that I don’t like - not the actual message.
 
I think we would do well to offer a greater sense of community, which at least in my very humble opinion is quite lacking in the various Parishes near me as compared to many Protestant churches.
 
VeritasLuxMea said:
I think we would do well to offer a greater sense of community, which at least in my very humble opinion is quite lacking in the various Parishes near me as compared to many Protestant churches.
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That’s a big reason I’m leaving it’s show up on sundays sermon is over close the doors nothing more. It’s even more hard if you’re a young adult because they only have high school groups and adult groups which are hard to mesh with other members when everyone is 30+ and you’re in your young twenties. Change definitely needs to happen with community because at almost all parishes I’ve been to I haven’t seen or felt any welcoming community feel.
 
Unless 30 is one significant digit and you truncate instead of round, I’m too old, but I remember having been “spoiled” by attending Fransiscan masses while in college. There was a sense of unity and brotherhood that I did not intuit at parish masses. Even most Protestant services are more welcoming to someone coming alone as a newcomer than I experienced at parish masses.

There are many other reasons I’m not very active at all spiritually / religiously now, but this is what I remember of Protestant services vs Franciscan vs parish masses all those years ago when I was young enough to fit in the topic age range.
 
It is unfortunate that so many parishes don’t have an outreach to young adults to meet their particular needs. However, many dioceses have organized groups and events.

I encourage posters, including those who aren’t attending Mass, to go to your diocesan web page – hopefully a search of “Catholic diocese of ‘X’ > young adults” will be helpful.

If possible, schedule an appointment with the parish pastor, to discuss your faith journey with him. Maybe he can address some of your questions, provide some spiritual guidance, and connect you with some other young adults in the parish.
 
I am amazed at the thinking that young people are falling away because this or that needs to change in the Mass. There are is a wide variety of Masses already.

Rather, if there is a solution it seems that it should be related to how to make religion relevant to a young person’s life even if the only means to learn about God was a service in a rented gym.

For some reason, young (and old) don’t think that God will direct or help change them in this life. They would rather spend years or decades in the wrong pursuit rather than seek God and be changed or directed.

Perhaps if there is a way to help convince people to seek God then it involves a better explanation of what seeking God involves, and why it matters in this life, as much as the hereafter.

I know many Protestants are criticized for the “success gospel”; however, that seems to be what they are trying to do.

However, the “success gospel” does not tell the whole story. Part of the story involves the perspective of the saints and martyrs who achieved a perspective that went way beyond any sort of success as the world defines it.

Somehow, somebody needs to find a message that makes religion relevant to young people in a way that tells the whole story.

I wish I knew the answer.
 
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